Shooting the Shit About Agent Financial Details, Imprint Mergers and Risks of a Top Heavy Industry
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra
4.8 • 842 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week’s Shooting the Shit, Carly and CeCe tackle some of the biggest conversations shaping publishing right now. They discuss the recent consolidation of Simon & Schuster and what fewer submission opportunities could mean for authors and agents, unpack concerns about the shrinking romance midlist and the growing dominance of a handful of bestselling authors, and share insights from the latest AALA agent survey on income, financial instability, and career sustainability in agenting. Carly and CeCe also discuss AI ethics, copyright registration issues, common publishing scams targeting writers, and answers listener questions about querying after publication, navigating agent-author relationships when projects don’t align, and understanding sales data from past books.
Note: CeCe Lyra is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates. If you’d like to query CeCe, please refer to the submission guidelines at www.wsherman.com. Carly Watters is a literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, but her work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co-host and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What's up everyone? This is Cece. So I recently grabbed lunch with an acquiring editor from Harper Collins, who told me that the number of submissions she's been getting has nearly doubled. And I wasn't surprised at all, because every agent and editor I know has been talking about how the volume of submission keeps increasing. |
| 0:23.1 | So personally, that is a wonderful thing because it's more reading for me, but it also means |
| 0:28.3 | I have more chances of matching with authors. |
| 0:31.0 | I consider it a privilege to review queries on books with hooks, and of course, in my |
| 0:35.6 | submissions inbox. But at the same time, I talk to writers who tell me that they wish agents would read more than a few pages because, |
| 0:44.3 | and I quote, my story gets better in chapter two. |
| 0:49.3 | I have to be honest, this kills me. |
| 0:51.3 | It's like me wanting chocolate chip cookies to have the nutritional value of kale. |
| 0:56.5 | It's just not realistic. Like it or not, no agent, no acquiring editor, is going to stick around to see if a submission gets better. |
| 1:05.7 | It's not because we're mean. It's because we get dozens and dozens every day. |
| 1:10.2 | I know it's harsh, but ambitious writers |
| 1:13.0 | embrace harsh realities. So here it goes. It's your job to make your opening pages |
| 1:19.1 | irresistible, to make agents crave it, to make agents want to read more. That's why I'm so |
| 1:26.6 | excited about my upcoming course, starting it right. |
| 1:29.7 | How to Begin Your Story in the Best Place and in the Best Way. I created this course after studying |
| 1:36.5 | hundreds of books. I've mapped out elements that are present in the beginning of all successful |
| 1:43.1 | novels and memoirs. |
| 1:44.8 | And I've designed checklists, actual checklists, that you can use to ensure that your story's |
| 1:51.4 | beginning is seducing your reader. |
| 1:54.4 | We'll cover how to write a great first line, different types of beginnings, and how you can |
| 1:59.7 | choose the best one, the best place to start, and the best way to start, yes, these are totally different things, when it makes sense to add a prologue and when it doesn't, how to frame your inciting incident in an appealing way, how to balance exposition and mystery, how to include context, but not weigh it down with too much |
| 2:19.0 | backstory, and what to do if your story has more than one POV or timeline. Most of all, I'm going to |
... |
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